Recently, Amazon announced their long-delayed deal to distribute Kindle books
through local libraries. The agreement utilizes
OverDrive, a digital distributor which provides eBooks
in a number of formats and already has partnerships with over 11,000 libraries
across the country. Different cities/regions have their own sites which are
affiliated with OverDrive, so the process will differ depending on where you
live. To start, go to your local library, or do a Library Search on OverDrive's
search page. My local library had me set up a
PIN, and the website directed me to select my library from a list, then enter
my library card number and PIN to login.

Once you login and go through the process of "checking out" a book, you will
see a link saying Get for Kindle. Clicking this link will take you to a
page where you can complete the checkout on Amazon.com.

This is where some of the warts begin to show. While my 3rd-gen Kindle
(recently rebranded the "Kindle Keyboard" after the announcement of the Kindle
Touch and
Kindle
Fire)
has a web browser, and I can get through the process of checking out a book
using it, the browser is incapable of spawning a new window. This results in an
error when I click the Get for Kindle link. So, checking out books from the
device is a no-go. This isn't all that surprising as the web browser is still
considered an experimental feature of the early-gen Kindles, and I'm sure that
the new Touch and Fire models will have better web support.

So, next I went to my library's "Digital Bookshelf" page on my smartphone's web
browser, thinking that at the very least I could download the book to my phone
and transfer it over to my Kindle since I did not have wi-fi available. But,
when I clicked the Get for Kindle link (which sends you to a page where you
can complete the checkout process on Amazon.com), Amazon redirected me to their
mobile web page, with a one-click buy link and no option to download the book.
Had I not been paying close enough attention I may have bought the book rather
than borrowed it. Luckily, the mobile browser I was using (Dolphin Browser HD
for Android), has the option to change the browser's user agent so that it does
not appear to be a mobile device. Once I had done this, I was able to get
through to the correct page to complete the checkout. There was an option to
transfer the book via USB, but selecting it resulted in an error and a message
saying to try again in 24 hours.

I eventually just downloaded the book once I was on wi-fi.

In conclusion, the new library lending service for Kindle is nice, but there is
still plenty of room for improvement. For power users like myself, changing the
web browser user agent is an easy solution, but a less-technically-inclined
user could easily get fed up by roadblocks like this. Amazon had plenty of time
to prepare their library lending system and should have taken into account the
ever-increasing number of people who browse the web using smartphones. When you
have built a thriving ecosystem around the idea that you can buy a book
anywhere and have it available to read in seconds, you are taking a step back
when you require customers to use a computer (or result to cumbersome
workarounds) to take advantage of library lending.